Enabling long term sustainability strategies through leadership identity

Pressure is increasing on societies to establish organised social mechanisms to reduce the environmental impacts of production processes with an emphasis on sustainability. Business organisations continue to struggle to implement Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) measures to achieve this objective. Despite forecasts estimating that the green technology and sustainability market will grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 26.6% up to a $36 billion valuation by 2025, macro-trends highlight that there is a high probability of significantly missing global climate preservation targets. From Electric Vehicles to biodegradable solutions, business models and global supply chains must now reimagine themselves in order to economically survive without compromising the current and future environment. This thesis avers that effective CSR will be met off the back of appropriate leadership behaviour including individual motivations and behaviours to embrace, absorb and reflect sustainability in day-to-day business activities and practices.
With businesses struggling to accommodate meaningful, long term sustainability strategies and the rising phenomenon of 'Greenwashing', scholarship is increasingly focussed on understanding the role identity leadership plays in reshaping organisational cultures and using it as a vehicle towards significant change. This focus is relevant as leaders are found to be organisation wide tone setters both by attaching importance to issues of sustainability and providing sufficient capacity to pursue non-market strategies. Particularly in cases of global crisis such as climate change the complexity and abstract consequences in the future form significant cognitive roadblocks to meaningful change. Focussing on leadership identity will provide a valuable opportunity in this context to observe the roles and behaviours of a new generation of leaders. The aim is to establish empirical observations on effective ethical leadership by exploring the individual narratives of micro-foundational leadership.
The proposed methodology for this research will be a mixed methodology approach using both quantitative survey and semi-structured interviews for the qualitative element. The quantitative survey will seek to establish relevant leadership skills and common identity themes identified by sustainable managers and leaders in markets identified by the IPCC at high risk of being severely affected by climate change. For the qualitative element focus will be on interviews with effective sustainable leaders from European and British SMEs, where the impact of leaders on organisational ethical culture is relatively higher and there is sufficient space for transformational change in organisational structure and operations. Benchmarks for positive sustainable leadership will be derived from the businesses own reports on the matter and third party performance measures including participation in Fairtrade, RSPO or the SAI platform where industry relevant.
The research will aim to contribute to the wider literature on micro-level CSR by increasing our understanding of how changing leadership identities shapes approaches to sustainable strategy and in fact its prioritisation alongside economic and social measures. The proposed framework has the potential to impact business and policy by informing leadership recruitment and training, and in suggesting how education and training can intrinsically nurture sustainability within the development of future business leaders. It furthermore aims to provide a roadmap for executives to improve their current CSR performance. Understanding the identity of leaders will be key to the successful management of long-term sustainability and competitiveness imperatives across industries everywhere.